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How does the Bible work? What makes an idea or practice “biblical”? According to the Westminster Confession of Faith, “The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture” (1.6). God has “expressly set down” necessary things in the Scriptures themselves—that is, in the words as given. What does this mean? As is the case for many biblical truths, we may understand it best by clarifying what it does not mean.
the plain things of scripture
To say that God has spoken “expressly” in His Word is to say that there are some things that He has said in Scripture directly, explicitly, plainly, and unmistakably. It means that God’s very words matter and, in some cases, communicate truth simply and straightforwardly. Often in Scripture we read that the Lord insisted that His words were to be exactly recorded (e.g., Deut. 4:2; Isa. 59:21; Jer. 26:2), and those words include direct, express speech regarding things that must be accepted and believed.
Though we may disagree on some specifics of the teaching of Scripture, some things are clearly and unquestionably communicated there. This would include fundamental or basic truths plainly and repeatedly written, such as that God has created all things, that humanity owes Him worship and obedience, that sin has entered God’s good creation with devastating effect, that Jesus is both God and man and the only Savior of sinners, and that what we know as history is the outworking of God’s wise and good purpose. Such direct and straightforward speech is not the only way that God has spoken in His Word, but the confession’s reference to God’s “express” speech is a critically important truth regarding what kind of thing the Bible is (and isn’t). In fact, properly understood, this is, one might say, a truth of elephantine proportions.
Elephantine? Yes. One of my favorite traditional images for the Bible involves an elephant: “Holy Scripture is shallow enough for a child to wade in it, but it’s deep enough for an elephant to swim in it.” There are several variations of this saying, and it likely goes back to Gregory the Great (c. 540–604). Gregory was moved by how Scripture challenges the intellect of the wisest and yet also edifies the simplest.
When we affirm that Scripture “expressly” teaches certain foundational truths about God, the world, the human condition, salvation, and the hope of the church, we are saying that we can trust the things that God has said plainly in His Word no matter how early or advanced we may be in Christian truth. These expressly stated things are basic and central truths in which God speaks to even the youngest and simplest.
Over the years, however, I have come to appreciate another way that this elephantine image also helps us avoid a common misunderstanding of Scripture’s “express” speech. Understandably, we sometimes think of theology as a construction project in which we “build” on Scripture to speak and think in a way that is related to Scripture (to be sure) and yet moves beyond it to loftier heights. On this model, we might imagine our theology as “based on” the Bible to the extent that it can refer to Bible verses in support.
But this way of thinking has at least one major problem: it has the “direction” of theology precisely backward. Theology isn’t a matter of building on top of the Bible’s words. Remembering the wading child and swimming elephant, we should say instead that theology is a matter of descending more deeply into the Bible’s words. We do not move up and beyond the words of inspired revelation to think and speak theologically; theology rightly understood is the work of descending more deeply into those very words. To put it differently, Scripture’s words are not merely the raw material for our theology; they are the very words of God whose profundity, whose depth, whose invigorating truth and life is limitless. Therefore, theology doesn’t move through and then beyond Scripture; it plunges ever more deeply into Scripture, including its express and simply stated truths, the beauty and power of which we will never exhaust. We dive into the Scriptures more and more deeply over the course of our lives, not beyond them.
biblical, not biblicist
The confession’s affirmation of God’s “express” teaching also helps us avoid other misunderstandings of what Holy Scripture is and how it works. One of the important truths being asserted by the confession is that Christians are to regard both the express teaching of Scripture and faithful deductions from Scripture as equally and fully biblical. This was important to clarify inasmuch as the Westminster Assembly was greatly concerned about heretical teachings that were ostensibly based on the words of Scripture but denied their “sense” (WCF 1.9). Appreciating the “sense” of Scripture’s words requires a reading of any one passage in light of the whole (and wholeness) of Scripture, which is to say, the “consent” of all its parts and its harmonious “scope” (WCF 1.5).
It is in fact deeply important to Reformed churches not only to affirm the truth of express biblical statements but also to protect this affirmation from catastrophic misunderstanding. The Westminster Assembly and other Reformed theologians of the era were especially concerned about the Socinians, who uniquely represented the potential for disaster here. The Socinians were a group who (like the ancient “biblicists” opposed to either the divine status or full humanity of Jesus Christ) denied the Trinity and other important doctrines on the basis that one could not find a direct “proof text” for them. The Socinians believed that biblical authority must be limited to Scripture’s “express” (what they called “literal”) statements, leaving no room for authoritative scriptural deductions. This approach to the Bible was fundamentally flawed, and it endangered (and still endangers) the faith and life of Christ’s church. And this “biblicism” was not biblical. By abstracting various verses or words from the Word as a whole, by expecting Bible words or expressions to stand on their own, and by demanding a simplistic verse-to-doctrine correspondence, these groups advanced a devastating misunderstanding of how God’s “express” speech in the words of Scripture relates to the teaching of Scripture as God gave it—namely, as a canonical unity. God has indeed revealed Himself in the “express” words of Scripture, but not in isolation from the “sense” of each word and passage that is given in Scripture’s “consent” of all its parts as one divine Word.
the necessary things
The paragraph in which the confession makes this statement about Scripture’s “express” teaching includes other features that can help us avoid similar misunderstandings. For instance, the expressly given Word of God is not a secret key to the truth concerning everything. The “whole counsel of God” that the confession refers to is only that which is “concerning all things necessary” for God’s glory and our salvation, faith, and life. This limits the divinely intended scope of Scripture’s teaching rather importantly. In addition to “express” truths and faithful deductions, there are also “general rules of the Word” that help us with concerns beyond these basics of faith and life. The sufficiency of inscripturated revelation is therefore its sufficiency for these necessary things, not for every need that we may have or think we have, nor for everything we may wish to know. Remembering this distinction may help us avoid frustration with God’s Word, since it may keep us from holding Him to promises He never made.
the central things
We might also be tempted to conclude that because all the words of God’s Word are inspired by God, they must all be equally central. To be sure, every word of God is necessary, true, and edifying to the church. There are no unimportant words of Scripture. But, while pious, this claim overlooks the Bible’s own sense of proportion. Happily, our most direct access to identifying what these clearest and most important things in Scripture are is provided in the Scriptures themselves. On multiple occasions, the biblical writers use the phrase “according to the Scriptures” to summarize the central concerns of what had been written and proclaimed beforehand.
From the writings of Paul, for example, we notice that there were sayings and summaries being taught in his day that he, as an Apostle, recognized as trustworthy and as worthy of being passed along to churches throughout the known world. One of the most notable examples of an early summary is found in 1 Corinthians 15:3–8, which identifies a set of beliefs that Paul considers of “first importance”:
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.
Key to this list is a range of historical facts concerning Jesus, whose life and work are central to the Christian faith. And yet these truths regarding Jesus are also “according to the Scriptures,” which is to say (in Paul’s time) the Old Testament specifically. From its earliest days, the church was taught to recognize that while all the Word of God is for all the people of God, there are also things “of first importance” that Scripture clearly and centrally teaches.
These central truths, the confession tells us, are clearly and generously taught by God Himself in the full scope of His Word—and with such clarity that no one diligently reading or hearing that Word in the ministry of the Holy Spirit can miss them.